Real estate event ideas: fill open houses, homebuyer seminars and investor nights

Every event should feed one part of your business: buyers, sellers, investors, other agents or referrals. Pick the event by the client you want next, then build the video and the invitation around that person.

Seminars are the underrated ones. An open house sells one house. A homebuyer seminar builds a list of buyers who'll need an agent for the next 6 months.

A smaller first-time buyer pool means each one is worth more, and the ones who are close to buying want answers on down payments, programs and timing. That's the seminar.

Short video gets the event seen by people who would never find your listing on a portal. But a view is not a visitor. Here's the sequence that turns one into the other:

1. 13 to 4 days before, post a 20 to 40 second walkthrough. Lead with the one thing nobody expects: the backyard, the light, the basement.
2. 2Put the day, the time and the neighborhood in the caption and in a pinned comment. Describe the house, never the kind of buyer.
3. 3Reply to every comment within the hour, in the comments first. People read the replies.
4. 4DM everyone who asks a real question: price, HOA, schools, parking, timing.
5. 5The day before, post a 10-second “see you tomorrow” clip, and answer the new comments.
6. 6After the open house, post what people loved, and invite commenters to the next one.

Know the rules of each channel. On TikTok, DMs are only available to accounts 16 and older, and TikTok's guidelines treat irrelevant promotions and links in comments as spam, so keep links out of other people's comment sections. On Instagram, Stories with the date and a link sticker carry the event, and your DMs carry the conversation. More channel detail is in how to promote an event on TikTok and how to promote an event on Instagram.

A seminar needs registrations, not just views, and it needs more than you think, because free seminars lose a lot of people.

Say you want 25 people in the room. Plan for about a third not to show, so you need about 40 registrations. If 1 in 5 people you DM personally registers, you need about 200 conversations over 3 to 4 weeks. Those rates are assumptions: track yours after the first seminar.

Keep promoting until the day. Most people decide late.

That's webinar data, but in-person seminars fill the same way. Your best week of DMs is the last one. Topics that fill: “What you actually need for a down payment in this county”, “First rental property: the numbers on a real deal”, “Selling this spring: what to fix and what to skip”. Specific beats clever. The format lessons from how to promote a workshop apply directly.

They already raised their hand. Your DM should answer their question first, then make the invitation easy. No link dump, no listing spam.

When they reply, treat it like a conversation, not a form.

That reply answers the real fear, agrees with their timeline and asks for the one thing you need. For more first messages, see TikTok cold DM examples.

This part is not optional. The Fair Housing Act protects people from housing discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, national origin, familial status and disability, and HUD enforces it. Section 3604(c) of the Act makes it unlawful to make, print or publish any notice, statement or advertisement about selling or renting a dwelling that indicates a preference or limitation based on those characteristics. That covers your captions, your videos and your DMs, not just paid ads.

Targeting matters too. In 2024 HUD issued guidance warning that ad targeting and delivery tools can break the Act when they deny people housing information based on protected characteristics, or aim predatory products at vulnerable consumers. Whatever the current status of that guidance document, the Act itself still applies to how you choose who sees and receives your invitations.

• Choose who you invite by behavior and interest: they commented on a listing, asked about first-time buyer programs, follow local housing accounts, or attended a past event.
• Never choose or exclude by a protected characteristic, or by a stand-in for one.
• Describe the property, not the people. “3 bedrooms, fenced yard, 4 blocks from the park” is fine. “Perfect for young families” or “ideal for young professionals” is not.
• Answer every person who asks, the same way, with the same information.

Registrants who hear from you personally show up. Ones who only got an automated confirmation often don't.

1. 1Confirm by text right away, from you, with the date and address.
2. 2The day before, send a 10-second video or voice note: “See you tomorrow at 6, bring your questions.”
3. 32 hours before, text parking details. For open houses: “I'm here until 3, text me when you're outside.”
4. 4Within 24 hours, thank everyone who came and send one useful thing: the lender's checklist, the comps, the slides.
5. 5Send no-shows the same useful thing and the next date. They're still in the market.

Open house visitors deserve the same care. A same-day thank you with the one detail they asked about beats a drip campaign. Ask if they want to hear about similar homes, and invite them to the next seminar. The full sequence is in how to reduce event no-shows.